She May Be Small, but Kaci Lickteig (the Pixie Ninja) Is a Giant in Ultrarunning

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Kaci Lickteig estimated that she does nearly 80 percent of her mileage along the trails at Zorinsky Lake Park in West Omaha, Neb.CreditRyan Henriksen for The New York Times

By Scott Cacciola

Aug. 11, 2015

OMAHA — Kaci Lickteig, in her creative efforts to mimic various mountain ranges that are not native to Nebraska, does some of her most important training here on a nondescript stretch of road that she calls Pacific Hill.

The incline, gentle at first, starts where Pacific Street intersects with 153rd Street and then climbs more sharply for seven-tenths of a mile until it reaches a green electrical box opposite Millard North High School, just short of Dunkin’ Donuts and Rusty Nail Pub. This is the spot where Lickteig, a familiar presence to motorists, stops so she can run back down the hill so she can run back up the hill. She often repeats this exercise six, seven or eight times.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Lickteig said. “But you have to find your way, one way or another.”

Lickteig, 28, has defied her geography (the flat plains of the Midwest) and her background (she barely ran as a teenager) to emerge as one of the country’s top female ultramarathoners.

On June 28, Lickteig placed second at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, one of the sport’s most prestigious events, by traversing an undulating course in Northern California in 19 hours 20 minutes 31 seconds. She overtook several competitors in the race’s late stages, signaling her arrival in boldface type.

“It was about the hardest I’ve ever run in my life,” said Miguel Ordorica, her close friend and training partner, who jumped into the fray to pace her — a perfectly legal tactic — for the final 38.5 miles.

Ultrarunning is a peculiar endeavor, reserved for athletes who push themselves to the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion. Anything longer than a marathon, which measures 26.2 miles, typically qualifies as an ultramarathon. The longer the race, the stronger Lickteig — all 90 to 95 pounds of her, depending on the day — seems to get. Friends know her as the Pixie Ninja.

“I tell her that she can step on the starting line for any ultramarathon, and she should expect to win,” said Jason Koop, her coach. “That’s how good she is, and that’s how hard she’s trained.”

Lickteig, who works full time as a physical therapist at an area hospital, plans to celebrate her 29th birthday on Friday by running 29 miles. But she is not wedded to sentimentality. She breaks out the sneakers she wore for her first 100-mile race — the Black Hills 100, held in Sturgis, S.D., which she won in 2013 — whenever she mows her lawn.

Still, she savors every race, every training session, every chance to run. She is not motivated by money or fame. The sport provides little of either. But her drive is boundless. She wears a GPS watch and charts her mileage on Strava.com, a website that makes all her workouts public. She regularly logs 110 to 120 miles a week.

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In June, Lickteig placed second at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run. She high-fived spectators as she approached the finish line.CreditAllen Lucas

“A lot of people want to know: What are these people doing to prepare for these races?” Lickteig said. “I’ve got nothing to hide. It’s just running. If you can train the way I train, more power to you.”

Koop, who coaches Lickteig remotely from Colorado, said her slight build probably worked as a biomechanical advantage. Rather than trudge across trails for endless miles, Lickteig almost floats, her stride light and loping. She avoids a lot of unnecessary wear and tear, he said.

Then again, Lickteig comes from hardy stock. Her mother, Lori Leonard, worked as a welder for nearly 25 years before she gave it up after having four vertebrae fused in her neck. She now loads equipment onto semitrailers and rail cars.

“At least I got out from under that welding hood,” said Leonard, who likes to ride motorcycles in her spare time.

Like her daughter, Leonard, 53, is a relative newcomer to the select world of ultramarathons, having completed two 50-mile races of her own. But her daughter’s feats astound her.

“She’s a little animal,” Leonard said.

Lickteig recently bought a home in a quiet neighborhood here on a cul-de-sac next to Zorinsky Lake Park. The location is ideal for Lickteig, who estimated that she does nearly 80 percent of her mileage along the trails at the park. That works out to roughly 4,000 miles a year, or 540 loops of her favorite 7.4-mile circuit around the lake.

Koop rattled through some of Lickteig’s attributes: trains hard, accepts coaching and listens to her body, most of the time. But she is also stubborn, and her constant desire to push herself has created occasional issues.

“She’s super tough,” Koop said. “It’s a quality that some athletes have and some athletes don’t. She’s got it, almost to her own detriment sometimes. She’s really, really, really tough.”

On a recent weekday afternoon, Lickteig joined her training partner, Ordorica, 43, for a loop at Zorinsky. Lickteig was enjoying an “easy” week, as mapped out by Koop, and two of her dogs, Mia and Jaida, were along for the jog. Mia ran with an effortless gait. Jaida bounded along as if on a trampoline, her tongue flapping in the breeze.

“Jaida runs like me,” said Ordorica, who works in fuel conservation for a major railroad.

Lickteig and Ordorica met three years ago through a trail running group. Lickteig was getting serious about the sport, and she was aware of Ordorica’s reputation for competing in ultramarathons. Ordorica has extended himself so far and so hard that he has occasionally hallucinated. For example, he once thought he was accompanied during a race by Mike Nelson from the now-defunct television series “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” (He wasn’t.)

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Running at Zorinsky Lake Park, from left, Miguel Ordorica, Lickteig, Austin Scroggin and Shannon Scroggin.CreditRyan Henriksen for The New York Times

Yet they quickly became inseparable training partners. One weekend, they went for four runs totaling nearly 60 miles.

“She loves running,” Ordorica said.

Just Part of the Team

If ultrarunning is a passion that borders on obsession, Lickteig is complicated in other ways. She collects stuffed animals but listens to heavy metal. She eats healthy but acknowledges an addiction to diet Mountain Dew. And at 5 feet 3 inches (“and three-quarters,” she says), she does not consume much space but conquers distances that are enormous.

Lickteig’s exploits are well known among the 303 residents of Dannebrog, Neb., the small town where she grew up.

“When Kaci comes home and she’s running around here, everyone knows her,” said her grandmother, June Cords, who interrupted her viewing of “The Price Is Right” for a telephone interview. “Nobody can believe what she’s done.”

Lickteig began running as a high school junior when a friend persuaded her to join the cross-country team, which was low on numbers — a not uncommon problem at Centura High School in Boelus, Neb., where Lickteig had 46 classmates. On her first day, she joined her new teammates for a morning jog. She labored throughout. Later, she was surprised to learn that the coach had scheduled an additional workout for after school.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ ” Lickteig recalled. “But I’ve always been the type of person where if you’re going to sign up for something, you stick with it until the end.”

She typically finished races toward the back of the pack after slowing to walk up hills, but she refused to quit. She was not a precocious talent, not by any stretch. Her grandmother expressed concern.

“And I’m still very concerned about it,” Cords said.

Because her mother worked nights, Lickteig lived with her grandmother through high school. Cords, 77, has always been protective. So Cords worried when Lickteig took up running, fretting that the sport would be too taxing on someone so small. Cords worried when Lickteig boarded an airplane for the first time after qualifying for a national meet while running for the cross-county team at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. (The airline lost her luggage.) Cords worried when Lickteig moved to Omaha for graduate school because, as Cords put it, “that’s a big city.” And Cords worried — really worried — when Lickteig decided to tackle 100-mile races in the wilderness.

“She ran into a bear that first year out at Western States,” Cords said. “I mean, there was a bear!”

Lickteig has overcome her share of obstacles. In 2013, she was preparing for her first 100-miler when she slipped on some ice and fell hard on her side. She struggled to get out of bed the next morning, she said, but she had already planned to run 15 miles with friends.

“I wasn’t going to bow out of it,” Lickteig said.

She wound up falling again, on the same side, but finished the run. At work the next day, she had X-rays — a perk of working at a hospital — that revealed three fractured ribs. Just three months later, while running alongside Ordorica, she placed sixth among female finishers at the Lincoln National Guard Marathon, in 2:56:41.

He somehow did. The marathon was a turning point for Ordorica, who said he had downed four or five shots of whiskey the night before — a fairly ordinary prerace ritual for him at the time.

“I just love whiskey,” he said.

Despite his strong result, Ordorica reached the conclusion that he could not continue to drink and keep up with Lickteig. So he gave up alcohol. He has not had a drink since, he said.

“For her, every run means something,” Ordorica said. “So you have to be on point all the time.”

Strong at the Finish

Earlier this year, Lickteig was hampered by a sore left hamstring and was worried about her fitness for the Western States 100-miler. In May, she decided to test herself by taking a “baby step,” which in her mind meant entering the Silver State 50/50, a 50-mile race in Reno, Nev. Lickteig ran conservatively and finished in just over eight hours, good for second place.

More important, she felt healthy when she arrived for the early morning start at Western States some six weeks later. The rolling course, which begins in Squaw Valley, Calif., climbs more than 18,000 feet and descends nearly 23,000 feet before reaching the finish in Auburn, Calif. But the race quickly went sour for Lickteig, who felt tired for the first 20 miles and ate a grilled cheese sandwich that disagreed with her at Mile 47.

She had managed to recover when Ordorica joined her at the 62-mile mark, as night descended and the course snaked along steep trails once traveled by gold miners. Lickteig was moving so swiftly that Ordorica did not have time to refill his water bottle at an aid station. He began to suffer.

“Don’t be such a weenie,” he recalled telling himself. “She’s got 62 miles on you.”

Lickteig, stronger at the finish than she was at the start, placed second behind Magdalena Boulet, 41, a former Olympic marathoner from Oakland, Calif., who won by about 15 minutes. For her efforts, Lickteig took home a belt buckle.

“She’s always stronger than she thinks she is,” Ordorica said. “She always goes into these races a bit tentative, and then she gets stronger and stronger — and happier and happier.”

Lickteig, who has been training for the Ultra Race of Champions, a 100-kilometer event scheduled for Sept. 26 in Auburn, has had to decline invitations to international races because she does not have a passport.

“I should probably get one,” she said.

After running so many miles, she finally seems to realize that she is going places.